The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Four years ago, the Batter Half and Co. opened its first shop in Zamalek and it wasn’t long before it earned a wide fan base with their signature Chocolate Heaven and Red Velvet Cake. Comfortably nestled among the best confectionary shops in Cairo, the Batter Half & Co. decided to take it up a notch this summer by offering  ice cream lovers a selection of flavours to choose from.

Wondering if The Batter Half and Co. has what it takes to impress ice cream addicts, we made up our minds to go and see for ourselves.

Arriving a little bit too early, the ice cream hadn’t been put on display yet, so we had to wait for about 10 minutes before everything was in its place. Besides a number of innovative flavours like red velvet and biscuit, we found some fruity flavours like mango and lemon as well as the universally-loved flavours including Nutella, coffee and caramel.

Easy as it was to choose what flavours we wanted to try, the process of having them scooped was laborious for the staff; the stone-hard ice cream needed to rest a little before it could be served.  But with the lemon being the only flavour supple enough, we decided to have one scoop (15LE) in a cone until the rest  of our order was ready, which happened to be a scoop of  biscuit, caramel and coffee ice cream .

We had mixed feelings about the lemon; despite being the creamiest lemon ice cream we’ve ever tasted, we expected a zestier taste worthy of the distinctive flavour of lemon. In regards to the cone, we can’t really judge given that we were too early to have a freshly-baked one, but the flavoursome buttery taste made up for the slight limpness the cone had.

Thinking that it would taste like baby food, we were a bit skeptical about the biscuit ice cream, but it turned out to be the highlight of our visit; in addition to being as tasty as fresh butter cookies, it had an exquisite grainy texture – something we never thought we’d enjoy in an ice cream.

Flavoursome and rich, the coffee ice cream also had crunchy bits of something that we honestly couldn’t identify. Whether they were chocolate chips, coffee beans or both, those bits boosted the flavour as a whole. Just as good, the caramel flavour had a natural taste without being over sweet.

Now that we liked almost every single ice cream flavour we tasted at The Batter Half & Co., it’s clear that the place mastered the art of ice cream making –all the more reason to love it.